


American Myths

by yourcrookedheart



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Character Study, F/M, critical examination of Captain America™
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-18 10:25:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14211114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourcrookedheart/pseuds/yourcrookedheart
Summary: Eight decades of Captain America, as seen through the eyes of one ex-Soviet spy.





	American Myths

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ExistentialMalaises](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExistentialMalaises/gifts).



> Sound out the trumpet noise.
> 
> Happy birthday to one of my favorite people as well as writers. It’s not exactly fluff, but I hope you like it!

The first time Natasha hears of Captain America, he is a name in a Russian history book.

In the colorized photograph he is wearing a garish suit — red, white and blue. Natalia wonders how he used to hide, and Yelena says he didn’t need to. Silly Americans with their silly costumes, she scoffs, are everything the Widows are trained not to be. Why use stealth and deception when you can punch your way through.

Centuries of American military history, condensed into a single line by an eleven year old child.

There is something distasteful about the image, the shameless stripes and blinding smile staring up from the page, as if he wasn’t a filthy mercenary like the rest of the Americans. War hero is just another word for war criminal, it’s only their propaganda which conceals the truth.

Steve Rogers is the enemy. No winsome smile will change that fact.

***

When Natasha joins S.H.I.E.L.D., they make her take a course on American culture and politics. Seinfeld, Whitney Houston, John Steinbeck. What any of this has to do with working for a government agency remains a mystery to her, but the curriculum includes the history of Captain America. The glossy pages show him in all his heroic glory, tricolored shield at the ready, fist in the air in celebration of a victory he never got to witness.

It all strikes Natasha as terribly sad. The photograph that shows him laughing with his fellow soldiers makes him look so young, hair combed and parted like a choir boy, eyes shining even in grainy black-and-white. The caption — ‘The national hero in an unguarded moment’ — calls to mind a playfulness that is in stark contrast with what she knows of war, and the cognitive dissonance hits her like a kick in the stomach. Handsome boys playing at combat, as if the guns in their monochrome hands didn’t kill millions. Husbands and children, enemies of the United States just like Natasha was once upon a time.

She’s trying not to think like that anymore. The American ‘they’ has become an ‘us’, as Nick Fury so readily pointed out the first time she sat in his office.

Still, the tale of victory the history book in front of her tells is one she cannot seem to inhabit, no matter how hard she tries. The slogans remain empty, the zealous light in their Captain’s eyes only reminding her of his demise not long after the photographs were taken. The champion, eternally young and fearless between these pages, meaningless death immortalized into one more American myth. She wonders if he was fearless as his plane plummeted to earth.

If for one brief moment, the Captain hated America too.

***

One afternoon in June, years later, Natasha watches on the news as the police commissioner of New York City announces that the body of Captain America has been discovered in some arctic region, that he’s been brought home, that the nation’s hero is alive. There are tears in his eyes as he explains the Captain was an inspiration to him growing up, as He has been to many.

 _And on the third day he rose_ , Natasha murmurs in her empty apartment, imagining blood dripping from the Captain’s hands as he urges his people to have faith.

All the broadcast shows of his frozen form is shaky cam footage, but it’s enough to confirm that he hasn’t aged a day.

A handsome hero, perfectly preserved. It’s nothing less than a miracle.

***

The first time Natasha meets Captain America, he is standing on the tarmac of one of Nick’s brand new helicarriers, and for a moment she stops dead in her tracks. He looks so much like the decade-old photographs it is almost like seeing a ghost, his hair still in a clean side-part, his face still impossibly linear.

For a moment, she catches herself believing.

Then the Captain shifts, a nervous tic, and the illusion shatters like a bullet shot through glass.

He blushes at her teasing comments, eyes wide and impossibly blue. _Welcome to the future, soldier boy_. As if by muscle memory, the Captain comes to attention, shoulders a straight line.

 _At your command, ma’am_.

***

The shadow of Captain America has always hovered around Natasha, usually somewhere at the corner of her eye, barely visible but present in some way or another. Russia and America, her mother and father; both of them preoccupied with the Captain for different reasons.

Two years of fighting alongside Steve Rogers, and the shadow becomes a wraith, fog-talons clawing into their skins.

At first, Natasha thought it was the man behind the mask who was the illusion. _Take that away, what are you?_ A translucent marionette, strings in the hands of some shadowy government? A blank slate, kind and innocuous, almost blending into the background between the forces of personality on the team.

Now, she knows it is the Star-Spangled Banner uniform which is the ghost. If it’s trailed her, it’s haunted Steve. Sometimes she thinks even he can no longer tell the difference between the man and the legend.

Every day, she tries to coax out the man. Every day, she grows more delicate. Outright flirting, she figures out early on, only makes him retreat, so she turns to more subtle measures. She drops the names of women she knows he’d get along with if he agreed to go out on a date with them, though he never does, leaves flyers in his locker for events he never attends. When he at last makes a friend she celebrates in the privacy of her own apartment, even if the man is a stranger Steve met during exercising. Natasha traces his identity — handsome army guy checks out. Slowly but surely, Steve disentangles himself from the Captain. One friend at a time, though Natasha claims credit.

They still fight, back to back, for America. Natasha doesn’t feel like the actress she once was. Neither, she hopes, does Steve.

***

Love is for children.

The two of them are, for better or for worse, soldiers. Children do not stand in the wake of a city in ruins and realize most of it was caused by them. Children do not look death in the eyes, and feel relief.

The blood on their hands isn’t a result of stigmata. If love is an illusion, so is faith.

***

Natasha stares into the pale eyes of the Winter Soldier, and clenches her fists at the phantom ache of a bullet wound.

He is, she knows, one more hero-turned-monster. The devastation in his wake is no more his fault than the Hulk’s destruction is Bruce’s. The knowledge doesn’t stop a bolt of pain from shooting through her scar as she recognizes the vacant stare.

Steve guards him like a Shepherd, and she allows the pleading eyes which meet hers across a German airport to soften her. Despite the jaunty flag on his suit he is a refugee now, a stray. It’s a feeling she’s all too familiar with. She’s pledged allegiance many times over the years, but this is the first time she means it.

Hours later, the sirens. The news bulletins, the ‘wanted’ speeches. America has turned on its Captain, and Natasha’s never felt more distanced from the nation that fostered her.

***

All over the country, people burn Captain America comics in homemade bonfires and Iphone recordings. Others graffiti the name like a campaign slogan. America is divided, never more obvious than when they pull at the arms of their national hero until he tears neatly in two. A ragged doll, discarded by detractors and disciples equally.

 _Long way down from the pedestal_ , he murmurs one day as if quoting, voice wry as they watch the evening news, and Natasha’s fingers itch with wanting to soothe the distress in his forehead and brows. His eyes remain fixed on the screen, even as they watch something far beyond it. His mussed hair and thick beard seem like a polar opposite from the pictures Natasha remembers. The change should denote freedom, not flight. She wants, more than anything, for Steve to be free. This, she feels, should not be a luxury.

Days pass, weeks. Nothing changes. Natasha, however, is a firm believer in making change happen and so one night during the seven o’clock news, Steve’s shoulders drawn up to his ears, she turns off the radio and kisses him. His eyes are wide, cheeks flushed, almost looking like the Captain she first met so many years ago. It suits him.

 _You and me, we’re the same_ , she writes into his skin with her lips. Unmoored, uprooted, citizens of the in-between. The belief in his gaze is missing its former spark, but there is a glimmer there, a notion of faith. With every new kiss, Natasha vows to ignite that flame.

***

He is a Captain without a country.

There are, Steve has realized, far more precious things than belonging to one. More rewarding things than being worshiped by a nation. There are universes undiscovered in the green of a spy’s eyes, and he is feeling adventurous.

He’s been a soldier, a symbol, a myth. When he drops the shield with an irrevocable clatter, like shedding red-white-blue skin, he emerges a man.

**Author's Note:**

> All opinions expressed in this fic are those of the characters, though some of the irony might be mine.
> 
> Find me on [tumblr](http://queennsansa.tumblr.com/).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Layers of Mystery](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14357724) by [ExistentialMalaises](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExistentialMalaises/pseuds/ExistentialMalaises)




End file.
